FLINT, MI -- With some cooperation from Mother Nature, plans are to turn a downtown Flint street into a one-day winter wonderland.

For six hours on Feb. 9, organizers of the Flint Fire & Ice Festival plan to transform Second Street into 25-by-40 foot ice rink for skaters.

The festival between S. Saginaw and Harrison streets will also feature ice carving demonstrations courtesy of Mott Community College instructor Matt Cooper and his students.

On the fire side, area restaurants will compete in a
chili cook off and there will be pyrotechnic
displays.

The Capital Theatre will also be open for the day. Attendees
aged 21 and older can enjoy alcohol at a cash bar and see the historic venue's
renovated lobby.

The event is a departure from the usual spot for downtown events.

"[All of the downtown events] seem to be in that main
lot, so we want to move our events to different spots and make people aware of
what's downtown," said Chris Everson, manager of Flint Downtown
Development Authority.

With January temperatures already hitting 60 degrees, Everson said the possibility of a repeat next month won't be a focus in the
DDA's planning.

"When you're doing an outside festival, you just plan
the best you can," he said. "It could be 50 degrees, or 20 degrees.
All we can do is watch the weather as it gets closer, and go from there."

Stephanie Frazier, a medical student at Michigan State
University, said she likes the idea of a downtown winter festival.

"I would go, especially since I'm off from school right now,"
she said, taking a notepad out of her wallet to write down the date and time. "I've
ice skated once before, and it was nice. Chili is always good, I'd want to see
the renovations (in Capital Theatre), and it'd be fun if the ice sculptures
were big. ... It's something to look forward to."

Rob McCullough, executive assistant at Flint Crepe Company
and project coordinator for Flint Public Art Project, said that the Fire and
Ice Festival could be the start of a more permanent fixture downtown.

"It would be like a pop-up Rockerfeller Center, and it'd be
a cool contemporary site for Flint to have," he said. He added that he would
enjoy the ice rink, and wishes that University of Michigan-Flint would open
theirs back up. "(The festival) could maybe be an example of something for
Flint to have in the future. When you start small, you can build big things."

The Fire and Ice Festival has a $20,000 budget, funded by a
C.S. Mott grant aimed at getting more people downtown during seasons outside of
the summer when the city already has big attractions like Back To The Bricks and the Crim Festival of Races.

Flint DDA officials hope that the eight festivals funded by
the grant can keep momentum going year round.

On New Year's Eve, downtown hosted a Mott grant-funded New Year's Eve
party that included a pub crawl, a 3-D light show and a
heated tent with music and drinks. Everson said the event attracted about 5,000
people to the tent and an estimated 8,000 people downtown in total that night.

"All the feedback has been positive from New Year's
Eve, so we did get that segment of society that doesn't come downtown," said
Gerard Burnash, executive director of Flint Downtown Development Authority.
"We'll get them back for sure, because it's such a good time."